


my heart, caught between your teeth (bite down)

by skiesaflame



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Character Study, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 05:27:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19370479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skiesaflame/pseuds/skiesaflame
Summary: Saber’s skin is far too soft for her hands to be this hard. Avenger’s too rough around the edges to care.





	my heart, caught between your teeth (bite down)

Avenger’s muscles ache. The wall she’s pressed against is cold and unyielding. Saber’s fingers dig into her shoulders firmly. There will be bruises in the morning, there always are, but Avenger pays it no thought. The marks left on her skin will be returned in kind to Saber’s own. 

Avenger likes the rough grooves she scratches into Saber’s back, likes the way the dark, near symmetrical dotted crescents her teeth print into Saber’s neck contrast against the pale slope of it, almost making its deceptively porcelain appearance crack. She can’t even claim to dislike the pain of Saber’s strong responses and far from gentle handling. She prefers it this way, really, and Saber appears fully aware of this without a word of her preference being spoken aloud. 

Saber seems to have a frighteningly accurate talent for picking apart Avenger’s raging. Frequently, she is mocked for her predictability by Saber’s sharp tongue. Avenger hates her for it, but there is so much of Saber to hate that it’s lost amongst the sea of resentment Avenger sets aside in a particularly barbed corner of her hateful heart. 

(Saber once tells her that she’ll drown in all the hate she seethes in. An offhand remark that cuts deep in Avenger’s chest and makes an unsettled mess of her nerves, a bottle of something flammable - something strong, something vile in taste and toxic to the body - shattered into a blazing pyre.

Avenger knows. Avenger knows that all she has is hate, that after all her bitter, angry words dry up and her hands stop seeking to draw blood and break bones and ravage the ugly world that she was spat into by perverse thought that there will be nothing left. Nothing left for her to move towards, and nothing left to be useful. It is an inevitability she will never make peace with, because peace itself is a denial of what she is at the core. 

So, she rages. She burns like wildfire and consumes and consumes and leaves behind ruins and ash and hurt, for she knows that her lungs will not drown while they burn, that black mud will only turn to dust to be spat back into the filth while her fire keeps hot enough. She keeps the memory of the sensation of smouldering skin and the images of the faces that she can blame for all that she cannot be at the forefront of her mind and stains her vision red. 

She yells at Saber until her throat is raw, pushing and snapping with bared teeth. Saber indulges her with snide responses slightly dulled, until she doesn’t and bites back twice as hard.) 

Saber drags her back into the present with a hard tug at what hair she can get a grip on. Avenger grunts, shifting her weight to try and regain some ground, some semblance of control that she’s never had, yet still feels like she’s lost somewhere between her thoughts. She can bring Saber to a halt, but she doesn’t. 

(There’s too much heat in Saber’s gaze. Her eyes are unsettlingly heated, contradicting the steely apathy set in them that does not quite melt away, and Avenger’s cheek is uncomfortably warm beneath her cold flesh as Saber cups it in her palm. Her first instinct is to pull away, hopefully upsetting Saber’s footing in the process. It’s rare to see anything shake Saber from her stride and Avenger jumps at any chance to attempt to do so. More often than not, it does not work. She can’t quite bring herself to move away. After all, it’s been so long since anyone has dared touch her with anything resembling intimacy steering their actions. 

Ritsuka, for all her kindness and patience, is easily preoccupied by her mass of summoned heroic spirits, and Avenger’s pride will never allow her to outrightly seek out her attention. So, she sticks to venting out her frustrations through picking petty fights with the weak and strong alike and on more occasions than she’d like to admit for the sake of risking crossing a line into companionship, winds up burning bridges with Edmond Dantès. 

Saber must see her discomfort, but instead of going out of her way to heighten it, lets her hand slip from where it lay. “Any pretense of chivalry I clung to in past has long since faded, but I will not touch you if you do not will it to be so.” 

There are as many things for Avenger to hate about herself as there are to hold against Saber, but in the moment she hates nothing more than how her skin mourns the loss of the softness of Saber’s palm. She inhales sharply, her voice choked when she finally speaks, “Y-you’ve finally gone and totally lost your shit. I’ll go call the demon nurse. I hope I at least get to see her crack open your skull to find whatever screw went loose in that fucked up head of yours.” 

Saber lets out a low chuckle. “You’re far more vile than I and the furthest thing from a perfect picture of mental stability. If anything, Nightingale is more likely to pick apart your thoughts and try to reassemble them through unnecessarily painful means than my own.”

“If I’m so vile, why’d you bother trying that in the first place? Stupid,” Avenger grumbles out. 

Saber’s smile is as bitter as it is wry. “You never do bother to think through what you say. If you were even halfway less chaotic and aimlessly impulsive than you are, you might have had my respect.” 

Saber takes a step closer, moving further into Avenger’s space. Avenger feels cool beads of sweat gather at her nape. Her body burns. “I am the shadow that the prophetic once and future king tried to sever herself from in life, all the darkness that lurked behind Arthur’s guiding light. The very same darkness that came to swallow the light it was born from. Unlike you, I am not bound by denial. I’m everything that was ugly and cruel about my kingship. I will taint or ruin good things - good people - and honestly will not feel any remorse therefore… But, our master will, and I’m not through with fighting by her side just yet. I do not care for the added grief her secondhand guilt will bring me.”

“I’m not a good person,” Avenger says slowly, “and so you decided you want me to jump your bones because you need to get laid? Holy shit, that’s low, even for you.” 

Saber’s stares at her blankly, an eyebrow raised. “You’re sounding awfully indignant for someone so shameless.” 

Avenger scoffs out a choked noise. “ _I’m_ shameless! You’re the one who went up to her enemy and decided to ask for a quick fuck!”

Saber’s shoulders pull up in what Avenger guesses to be a vague and dismissive shrug. “The scent of desperation clings to you as strongly as Lancelot does to a pretty lady’s skirts. The fact that your gaze keeps on flitting to my breasts isn’t helping your failing attempt to feign disinterest. Leave the blushing and prattling at the mention of sexual activity to the saint whose face you wear.”

Avenger’s jaw loses its ability to function properly. “I- You… Shut up!”

“As I told you,” Saber begins, “I will not truly initiate anything while I do not have your explicit consent, but I’m growing tired of waiting for your dimwitted mind to catch up. My patience is fast approaching its limits. If it helps you hurry it up, I can tell you that I have some fondness for strong things, and loathe as I am to admit it, you certainly are strong in body.”

Avenger is starting to find it hard to hold Saber’s stare. Frustration grates at her gut. She hates it. She hates Saber for putting her in this position. Most of all, she hates that her heart and body alike pulsate with want. Want for something that should bring up bile in her throat at the thought of it. Want for some form of intimacy with another. “Y’know what? Fine! Fine. We’ll have this thing… between us, but I swear if anyone finds out I’m telling them it was your fault and stupid idea.” 

“I would expect nothing more.” Saber’s hard countenance almost looks to soften slightly, if Avenger didn’t know any better. Saber reaches out her hand for her to shake it. “Agreed?”

Avenger takes it sloppily and makes a show out of shaking it as someone would pick up a piece of garbage. 

There’s no mistaking the amusement in Saber’s tone as she says, “Well, then. I’ll see you later tonight in the dorms. Wait up.”

Avenger does her best not to stare after her as Saber strides off, she really does, but doesn’t manage it. Her cheeks are still burning when she heads to the cafeteria, and Dantès looks at her strangely when she sits down and groans.) 

She didn’t chosen to be brought into existence, but fought not to be erased. She’s never been given the chance to live, but finds herself choosing to mimic something like it with her head buried into Saber’s shoulder and her trailing kisses, all teeth and tongue, down her chest.

“Going to kneel for me, are you?” Avenger barely manages to bark, breathless. 

Saber smirks against her skin. “Never.” And then she’s leading them away from the wall, easing Avenger to her knees and finally pushing her to the floor. Saber’s hands are all ice and firm movements as they slip down her body, but Avenger feels as if she’s lying on hot coals.

There’s a steadiness to the consistency of their violent tangling that is a foreign presence in Avenger’s listless existence, brought about by Saber’s surety. It’s not entirely unwelcome, despite how frustrating it is to see Saber still keep a shaky grip on her composure while coming undone. She finds it hard to bother with caring about order though when Saber’s head is pressing between her thighs and her nerves and thoughts are in a state of utter chaos.

Saber is all ice, and Avenger is wildfire waiting to burn out, but until then, Saber somehow manages to continually add fuel to the flames.


End file.
